


this is not a love story

by apotheosizing



Category: Fate/Prototype, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 17:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7767622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apotheosizing/pseuds/apotheosizing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saber & Manaka, from meeting to parting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is not a love story

**Author's Note:**

> what a mess these two are

**I: OATH**

A petite form flounces down onto one of the hard-backed chairs of the Sajyou family kitchen as though it is a fluffy mound of cloud, the magus bearing equally light words that practically beamed toward her Servant. Her angelic face is contented with a look reserved solely for him, one that would have startled her father prior to the inception of the First Holy Grail War and yet is so freely given to the man who takes the chair opposite her with a polite smile. "Hey, Saber, tell me about your wish." For a moment, her hands linger on the cup she passes to him, forcing earthen gaze to meet the sky of her own (This is the way it should be, earth meeting sky. It was meant.) before she relinquishes her grip and she perches statuesque hanging upon his every word.He takes time to gather his thoughts and she finds herself peering out toward her sister and the doves with which she is so enamoured. It is an offer of privacy. She will not take anything from him that he is not prepared to give, even on so minuscule a thing as a question. She has no real opinion on the scene, it is nothing but somewhere to direct her attention while it longed to be elsewhere.

"I wish to save my people," he says and she feels that she should have guessed. A noble heart that beats for others, she (wished to, _would_ , **will** ) know its contents most deeply. "To change the fate of destruction that I could not avert in life."

A small nod, carrying weight of thought and weightlessness of cheer at once, is her answer. "That's just like you." Fondness blankets her statement as she cannot help but smile at him. "Everyone else wants power and recognition, but you..." For a breath she struggles for words. Only ever in his presence does her mask of omniscience crack. "You're a prince, through and through."

"A king," he reminds her gently, though she would never forget it. The silence that settles between them is comfortable, a suspended time that she might wish to continue forever, were all her wishes not for him.

"Saber," she speaks at last, with the air of a proposal that makes her words come with a faint edge of fanaticism. "My family wants to reach the Root, but I've already seen it. Wasting a miracle on something like that... it would be really boring, don't you think?" He does not answer, respect toward Hiroki holding his tongue. "Instead, I want to make your wish come true. For you, I'd do anything, so--"

"Manaka."

"I know. You couldn't do it. You'd never forgive yourself and I don't want you to feel that way. That's why I'll do it for you. I'll kill all of them and grant your wish." It is just a moment, but she can almost see the flicker of something behind his eyes. Concern or fear or hate. Whatever it is, she doesn't like it, the way it threatens to pierce her heart and bring tears springing to crestfallen eyes. She's said too much but it is too late to retract it. "Saber, I--"

"Manaka," he repeats, this time with a firmness that brings her to a halt. His words do not waver a moment, each chosen with precision and not offered to her unkindly. "Such a terrible task does not fall to you. That is why I am here." She feels that he is holding back, but does not press the matter. Rather, she stares down into the depths of the rapidly cooling tea and considers her options. They stand on the precipice of war and though she does not doubt for a moment that they will stand victorious, it is possible that Saber will be harmed by some unforeseen force. She cannot, will not, allow any ill to befall him. Of course, she is not so arrogant to believe she can contend in the Servants' war unaccompanied. The solution to her conundrum is simple: she will kill another Master and take their Servant for herself. That way, he will not face the battlefield. She does not reveal her resolve to the blond, proffering words of gratitude for his offer although she will privately refuse it.

"Okay. I'll be counting on you!"

 

* * *

 

**II: BROKEN**

The furnace of the Grail's engine of war lights her face in strange juxtaposition. It reveals more of her true self than could be allowed, were they anywhere else. One of the girls at her feet is struggling to suppress the sobs of dread that skittered up and down her spine. Manaka pays it no mind, bearing up fistfuls of the stranger's hair that flowed like a gentle stream in fist clenched with absolute will, muddying the water as annexes of the horridly holy Grail tear her apart. The remainder fall silent, unable to speak from horror or a flickering sense of self-preservation, those that dared to meet her eyes begging silently for the nameless victim's fate not to be shared.

(She remembers her father’s words: “Don’t make a sound to the sacrifices and don’t talk either. We must not develop empathy with the sacrifice. Empathy breeds hesitation and leads the black magus astray.” Ayaka and her birds. Manaka and these girls. To her, there was no difference.)

"I'm sorry," she says, sounding as though she means it - making it all the worse. "But if I weigh your lives against what he would give his for, well..." Pale hands are raised in a gesture of defeat, in explanation of a conclusion she had reached many days and many sacrifices ago. Some of them try to run or to hide, but she and the malevolent force of miracles permeate the entirely of the place carved out in the earth. She sighs, having expected as much, and speaks sweet words to the Beast beneath the surface of the Grail. "Don't hold back if you don't want to," she croons as another of the girls is rent by the dark contents of the chalice.

Now, only a pair are left. Her father and sister lay dazed among the pools of blood forming in the crevasses left in the earth by whatever great hand constructed this most profane of rituals. Without batting an eyelash at the prospect of what she is about to do, she personally drags him before the Grail, bloodied trails where knees had scraped against unforgiving stone remaining the only proof that he had been there at all. This action (necessary and not at all lamentable in Manaka's eyes but clearly horrific in Ayaka's) snaps the brunette girl's silence with a resounding crack of tears and desperate darting between this outcropping of uneven ground and that fissured plate of bedrock which offered only enough to shield her sight.

"Now Ayaka," she adopts a tone that had been prior reserved for sisterly advice. "There's no point in hiding. I can see you now, you know?"

One step closer.

Two.

Still not a single note of hesitation regardless of how dearly her sister sought it in face or pace. What she does not see, however, is the form cloaked in blue and silver that moves through stagnant air with equal purpose to her own. Hands with stains of blood are soaked in her own as she recognizes the sword's golden inlay through the haze of blood rushing out of her body.

Excalibur.

Distantly, unreachably so, she hears his voice.

"Now I see it clearly. You and this 'holy' Grail are both corrupt beyond salvation."

Her fingers tighten about the sharp edge of the blade as she struggles for purchase against legs that have already given out. As she falls into the Grail's cradle, her regrets are two-fold: the first is that she was unable to grant his wish; the second is that she had not been allowed to look upon his face, however twisted in anger, however deeply it might have hurt her, one final time.

 

* * *

 

 

**III: KEPT**

Impossibly, she takes a breath. It is not air that she takes in but the feeling alone ignites an idea within her – she is alive. Without a doubt, the person she love(s)d had mercilessly plunged his sword into her chest, but the evidence of a tentative hand to the site confirms that there was neither scar nor wound. It was a little disappointing, in truth, that she could not have that mar to remember him by. “Where am I?” Her voice meets nothing. That is what this place is; a nothing waiting to be filled. A pregnant darkness awaiting its moment. The Beast she had attempted to wake up. A little nod acknowledges this thought as she transitions to an unconcerned crossed-legged sitting position.

“You’re kind of a sleepyhead, aren’t you?”

Again, nothing.

Maybe it’s sulking after their loss. In contrast, Manaka is perfectly cheery, feeling the ghostly fragments of her contract with the spirit of chivalry stir within her body. Somewhere out there, he is waiting. “Ahh, Saber… It must be fate.” She recalls the dream the Grail showed to her, in which she encountered a Saber who was both hers and not. She recalls the oft cited statement in the limited documentation of the never-before performed ritual of invocation for the vessel of wishes that Servants and their Masters generally have some manner of compatibility running between them. What else could she call it but destiny?

“I need to ask a favour,” she finally says. “Can I get a second chance at granting Saber’s wish? I’m certain that this time I’ll be able to give you whole rivers of blood.” It is a selfish Beast, the opposite of her selfless wish for her prince, but she doesn’t mind. Everyone thinks that way. Agreement rings out through the Grail, a Faustian deal struck, but which is the devil?

Offering her pinky to the void through which she trod in promise, she makes her first step and finds an illusory red ribbon shimmering before only her. She knows what it is within moments ( _what else could she call it but destiny_?) and made to follow it through the dark. **_Yo U’ve bEeN betRAYed by HiM_** , growls the darkness and its slumbering resident at last, _**wHy tTRust agaIn**_?

She turns back toward it with a smile, the situation bringing words she had given to her sister before the war had begun returning to her in this place were naught else would. “Hehe, I guess you wouldn’t know. It’s the magic of love, of course. It’s more powerful than anything else, don’t you think?

“I’ll see you later!” A graceful wave to the Biblical monster and she was off, skipping along in the unfathomable abyss toward the one she always would orbit, more satellite pulled toward its rightful orbit than girl, though she does not yet know where she is going.

 

* * *

 

 

**N: SWORN**

All things in her life had led to this moment. It is the first thing she remembers, books in hand, studying the methods required to call upon the heroes of the past in order to achieve the Sajyou family's desires. The scale of expectation is too heavily weighted toward her, neglecting her sister entirely, damaging both near beyond repair. From each historical volume she peruses, she gathers an understanding that this is the fate of a descendant of a magus family - that the distinction between humans and magi is strictly drawn and she is not one of those that can be called a 'person'. It has never bothered her. Therefore she stood at the centre of the ornate circle that had been driven into the stones of the Sajyou household in time immemorial without any particular sense of anticipation. One might assume the fulfillment of the purpose of a life will bring chords of nervousness at the very least, but she knows she can do this. She has always been able to do anything asked of her, to grant any request (wish). At last, her father nods and the words she has known longer than any else spring to her lips.

“Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Let each be turned over five times, simply breaking asunder the fulfilled time.” Not a word is said gently. This is a command, not a request. She does not think she has ever made a request in her life.

“Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation. Let my great master, the Archmagus Schweinorg, be the ancestor. Raise a wall against the wind that shall fall. Close the four cardinal gates. Come out from the crown. Rotate the three-branched road reaching the Kingdom.” All she can see is the glow like hottest flame that poured with greater and greater ferocity from the circle, enveloping everything. Pain begins to seep in through her magic circuits, that flame burning through her in turn, and she does not flinch. She is a conduit and the copper does not turn away from its task when confronted with the deadly crackle of electricity.

“I shall declare here. Your body shall serve under me. My fate shall be with your sword. Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail. If you will submit to this will and this reason…… then answer! An oath shall be sworn here!” She struggles to keep her eyes open, feeling the Root opening at her behest with a familiarity that combats the intense urge of her too human body to escape the torrent of prana coming forth. She wants to see him from the first moment that he arrives, this radiant spirit that is too dazzling to look upon.

“I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven. I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell! From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power, come forth from the ring of restraint, Protector of the Balance!”

All at once, everything stops.

The light dies, creating contrast almost as painful as the brilliance that had vacated, but does not care. There is only one thing she can see and it is someone she has always waited for. A prince who did not and could not exist. No matter how many times the world had told her that no such being was permitted, here he stood. She had always believed and now a smile that was true and vindicated lights her features more beautifully than her charade of geniality ever had.

"I'm Saber. A Servant that will protect you." His voice is exactly how she imagined it and that too makes her unable to bridle her elation. She offers a little curtsy to him, the movement filled with a superficial charm and an older, deeper understanding.

"I'm Manaka. Sajyou Manaka." And so two bound by fate exchange their first words, ramifications yet to come cackling in the depths of the unseen.


End file.
